Demoorjian: Putting 1992 massacre in context

Saturday

Apr 27, 2013 at 12:01 AMApr 27, 2013 at 3:30 AM

I am responding to a Feb 19 letter by Vugar Mustafayev citing the 1992 Khojaly Massacre in Nagorno Karabagh Republic (NKR) that involved Armenians of the area. In recognizing the tragedy there is a great deal more to the issue. His letter ignores the fact of earlier incidents of Azerbaijanis warring with Armenians that preceded and led up to the Khojaly massacre.

I am responding to a Feb 19 letter by Vugar Mustafayev citing the 1992 Khojaly Massacre in Nagorno Karabagh Republic (NKR) that involved Armenians of the area. In recognizing the tragedy there is a great deal more to the issue. His letter ignores the fact of earlier incidents of Azerbaijanis warring with Armenians that preceded and led up to the Khojaly massacre.

In the late 1980's there was the Soviet Union’s Perestroika under President Gorbachev and the Karabakh Movement. Perestroika gave people of the area hope for democratic change and inspired them to speak out about problems under Soviet rule that were silenced under Communism. Karabakh was the first of the Soviet satellite country states to break that silence by establishing a sovereign democracy. The Nagorno Karabakh Republic is a legal state via the democratic will of its people yet Azerbaijan refuses to recognize it in contradiction with international laws.

In February 1988, the Karabagh legislature’s action to reunite with Armenia was met with a brutal pogrom in Sumgait, Azerbaijan’s second largest city. After which Azerbaijan launched additional pogroms against the Armenians in the Azerbaijan cities of Kirovabad (Nov. 1988), of unarmed Armenian civilians in Baku (Jan. 1990) and Maragha (April 1992). These massacres led to wider reprisals against the Armenians resulting in the disappearance of Azerbaijan's nearly half-million-strong Armenian community. In 1992 the Azerbaijanis initiated a war in which it recruited Islamic extremist mujahadeen to help eliminate Christian Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh that it lost, the Khojaly Massacre was a part of this.

Since these pogroms authorities in Azerbaijan have attempted to ignore and cover up these Crimes Against Humanity. For all these pogroms no one has been brought to justice.

Under the auspices of the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a much-tested ceasefire signed in May 1994 called for the right to self-determination for the people of Nagorno Karabagh Republic.

While one can sympathize with what Mr. Mustafayev presented, the fact is Azerbaijani disdain towards Christian Armenians is repeatedly proven with the belligerent threats by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev that follow in the footsteps of his father when he was president.

The Nagorno Karabagh is a part of historic Armenia. In 1921, Joseph Stalin put Nagorno Karabagh under the newly formed Soviet Azerbaijani administration yet giving it autonomous status. During seven decades of Soviet Azerbaijani rule, the Armenian population of Karabagh was subjected to discriminatory policies for its destruction aimed at its removal. This continues today and is taught to their children in classrooms as part of their history lessons that Armenians kill Azeris yet omitting their own transgressions. With a purported civility among Azeris, they teach their children propaganda and hate in schools. The youth and their future only know what they are taught.

Like the Azeri efforts to lobby the US Congress, the Armenians have been lobbying the United States Congress for many years to pass an Armenian Genocide Resolution formally acknowledging the 1915 Armenian Massacres what many today call the Armenian Genocide and some acknowledge as the first genocide of the Twentieth Century. With persistence such events will gain justice and eventually pressure the Turkish government, as Germany recognizes the Holocaust, to accept their prior governments’ responsibilities for Crimes Against Humanity. The Armenian Genocide and Khojaly Massacre are briefly commemorated in the US Congress.

If Nagorno Karabagh Republic were to fall into President Aliyev’s grasp the Azeri’s hatred might well lead to an all-out drive to destroy the entire Armenian population of the area. Not unlike the 1915 Armenian Massacres by the Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire who succeeded in exterminating seventy-five percent of the then Armenian population.

While regrettable, the Azeri campaign of Mr. Mustafayev’s letter to honor 800 slaughtered people may fall behind continued atrocities of tens of thousands, as we have in Africa today, among others. His letter was bringing attention to commemorate the Khojaly Massacre. April 24, is a solemn day Armenians worldwide commemorate the beginning of the 1915 Armenian Massacres by the Young Turks of Ottoman Turkey.